And this ship ismine.
But now...
I look again at the screen.
Her image lingers.
She’s speaking to the camera. Smiling again. But it’s different now. Smaller. Brittle. A smile like a wall with cracks showing. Her voice trembles beneath the cheer. Her hands twitch at her sides when she thinks the camera isn’t looking.
It’s a strange, stupid sensation.
Because I remember that look.
I’vehadthat look.
It’s the face of someone trying to be brave. Not for others. Not for audience or honor or pride.
Forthemselves.
And somewhere deep beneath the muscle, under the armor and scales and memory of war, something inside me twinges. Not pain. Not yet.
Recognition.
It’s been decades since I saw anyone worth saving.
It’s been longer since Iwantedto.
I watch her longer than I mean to.
Even as the others move. Even as Meyer’s crew fans out and begins probing the Hulk like ants on a corpse. Even as One Horn starts looking for corners, for shadows, foropportunity.
My talons drum the console.
I could wait. Let them come deeper. Let the Hulk finish them the way it’s finished the others. Let the gravity wells bend their bones, let the misfired AI scramble their nervous systems.
I could wait.
But that girl?—
Isolde, her name tag reads. Isolde Verrix.
She’ll die here.
Unless I don’t let her.
The ship is awake now.
I can feel it in the walls, in the grind of old machinery remembering how to breathe. The Hulk stirs under the weight of intruders like an animal twitching in its sleep, not quite conscious, not quite blind. Power trickles down sealed conduits that haven’t thrummed in years. Floor panels groan where no footfall has touched them in decades. The old systems... they're listening.
And I listen with them.
My talons rest against the edge of a half-dead monitor as I crouch in the shadows of a forgotten command alcove, tucked between two cracked coolant arrays. The screens flicker with broken feeds—images fractured by static and time. I make do. I always make do.
They’re sloppy, these newcomers. Loud. Greedy.
I don’t know their names, but I know their hearts. Mercenaries. Raiders. Treasure-hounds with no patience and less reverence. One of them tries to slice into a sealed data conduit using an old drill, and the ship retaliates—flooding the hall with static and resetting every environmental control in the sector. He stumbles back, cursing. The Hulk is watching them as much as I am.
I can use that.
